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POLITICAL EDUCATION 


AN ADDRESS, 


-DELIVERED BEFORE THE 


Social Union of gfmhfst Cfollejgc 


ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT, 


WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8, 1860. 


BY HORACE MAYNARD. 


PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 


BOSTON: 

PRESS OF GEO. C. RAND AND AVERY, 


NO. 3 CORN" Irl ILL. 
1861 . 



POLITICAL EDUCATION. 


AN ADDRESS, 

J?oi[ial Union of gunhf st (ffollwje 


ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT, 


WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8, 1860. 


BY HORACE MAYNARD. 



BOSTON: 

PRESS OF GEO. C. RAND AND AVERY, 

NO. 3 CORNHILL. 

1861. 





) 



/ 




* s 






ADDRESS. 


Time and occasion, in their constant procession, bear 
with them an ever fresh lesson of instruction. To 
gather their teachings from the irrevocable past, and 
to arrange them in their orderly sequence, is the true 
work of History, in her highest department of philos- 
ophy. To read them and understand them, as they 
are delivered, in the currency of transpiring events, is 
an achievement rarer and much more difficult. It is 
the power to do this which distinguishes the men of 
action from the so-called men of thought, — the states- 
man from the scholar ; and which forms the most 
essential qualification for the varied exigencies of 
practical life. 

We are now in the midst of important events. In 
the old world and in the new, great transactions suc- 
ceed each other with a rapidity that would startle, 
were it not absolutely stunning. At this moment, our 
own country is passing through the scenes of high 
political excitement incident to the periodical contests 
for the possession of the Government and the control 


4 


of its foreign and domestic policy. Even in these 
classic halls, devoted to science and elegant letters, are 
heard, at a distance not remote, the loud resounding 
surges of the popular waves, as they beat and break 
with resistless dash, threatening to submerge all who 
dare oppose themselves to the shock. Heedless what 
lesson of warning or of encouragement may thereby 
be imparted to the sagacity of the statesman, or to 
the instincts of the place-seeker, let me inquire whether 
these stirring events do not speak, in tones of signifi- 
cance, to the young men of the schools, upon the 
importance of adding to their liberal culture, a politi- 
cal education, — the topic which I have prescribed to 
myself as the theme of this present Discourse. 

I pass by the commonplaces, so obvious and trite, 
connected with the position occupied by the youthful 
American scholar, his duties and his hopes, recognizing 
his acknowledged rank as of the class from which, for 
the most part, are to come the rulers of the land, 
whether the chosen and titled, or the self-constituted 
and usurping. Shall he qualify himself for this, his 
destined career, by an early and thorough training in 
politics ? — by which I mean, not the ephemeral issues 
of rival aspirants for places of responsibility and honor, 
but the noble department of applied science, to which 
appertains all that concerns the peace, the dignity, and 
the prosperity of the State. I know not if there be 
not some, who, from an acquired distaste for political 


5 


affairs, and with but a moderate estimate of the char- 
acter of politicians, will be deterred, by the unpleasant 
nature of the subject, from listening, while I attempt 
an answer to this question. 

To one not acquainted with the actual fact, and 
reasoning a priori upon the subject, such a question to 
a people impressed, as we are, with the importance of 
the most thorough training, as a preparation for every 
other pursuit in life but that of government, would 
seem like the propounding of a truism. We have 
schools of theology, where our clergy are educated in 
the holy mysteries of our final redemption ; schools of 
law, where are taught to patient and long-toiling 
pupils the principles underlying public and private 
rights and public and private wrongs, as well as the 
method of their assertion and redress ; schools of sur- 
gery and medicine, instructing annual thousands how 
to avert the shafts of death, or, at least, to assuage our 
mortal pangs ; schools for the soldier, and schools for 
the sailor ; normal schools, where the teacher himself 
is taught; schools of agriculture; schools of art; 
schools of science ; schools of skill ; schools of design ; 
schools of deportment, aside from the schools for rudi- 
mentary instruction, and for instruction in the various 
moral and social duties of life ; all well patronized and 
largely appreciated ; — but, for the highest vocation 
known to civil society, the great art upon which the 
happiness and welfare of the country and its teeming 


6 


millions depend, — the art of protecting the persons, 
reputation, and property of the good, against the 
violence, the malice, and the guile of the bad, — of 
relieving the weak from the oppression of the strong, 

— of shielding the poor from the exactions of the rich, 
and the rich from the jealousy and envy of the poor; 
the skill to preserve the national honor intact, amid 
the jarring and conflicting rivalries of the nations, — to 
pursue, without swerving, the delicate and arduous line 
of public policy, which seeks nothing that is not right, 
and submits to nothing that is wrong ; the sagacity to 
discover and develop the agricultural, the mechanical, 
and the commercial advantages of the country ; the 
foresight to anticipate all mischiefs, all causes of domes- 
tic dissension, and all subjects of foreign strife, — so 
that the people now, and in all time, will be left free 
to cultivate the blessed arts of peace, and to enjoy her 
smiling and plenteous rewards, — for these attain- 
ments, surely not small, nor lightly to be esteemed, 
to fit young men to become wise rulers, discreet 
ambassadors, prudent counsellors, profound legislators, 

— for all this, we have no school nor portico, no lyceum 
nor academic grove. These acquirements, it would 
seem, like reading and writing in the opinion of hon- 
est Dogberry, are supposed to come by nature. 

Even from our colleges and universities, where Learn- 
ing shines with her divinest light, very few of her 
rays ever penetrate these high domains. The time 


7 


was, and it is not very remote, — may I not hope it is 
different now, — when a diploma from no literary 
authority in the land implied a knowledge of the 
Declaration of Independence, or of the Articles of 
Confederation, or even of the Constitution of the 
United States. Neither the preliminary, intermediate, 
nor final examinations required an acquaintance with 
either of these immortal State papers, as an essential 
to the baccalaureate. Fortunate, indeed, if the exer- 
cises at graduation did not betray something worse than 
mere ignorance, solecisms, wild ideas of government 
and political power, gathered from the sturdy codes of 
Numa and Solon, or from the gentle philosophy of 
Harrington and Sir Thomas More. In political 
science, the alumnus entered the world a perfect cos- 
mopolite, as well fitted for the civic duties of an Eng- 
lishman or of a Swede as of an American. The whole 
course of study had been marked out for him, without 
any reference to his nationality, or to the relations con- 
sequent upon it. Hence, it should occasion no surprise 
to find such a one familiar with every streamlet in 
Attica or Ausonia, and yet locating the Muscle Shoals, 
as did a former President, in the State of Tennessee. 
He might be able to recount every petty skirmish 
in each Punic war, but it was a mere chance if he 
ever heard of the Cowpens, or of King’s Mountain, or of 
Talladega, or of the Horse-Shoe. The public literary 
exercises abounded in allusions to Kant, and Cousin, and 


Coleridge, and Carlyle, but never a mention of Madi- 
son, or Jay, or Alexander Hamilton, that noble trio of 
civilians and publicists, the lore of whose volumes was 
scarcely known by the table of contents, or even by the 
title-page. Is it strange, then, if questions involving 
the very existence of the Government, defining the 
extent of powers granted and powers withheld, tracing 
the line of demarcation between organic and legisla- 
tive authority, between rights surrendered and rights 
reserved, between duties positively enjoined and duties 
necessarily implied ; questions relating to the consti- 
tution of Senates and the province of Courts, — what 
the former should or should not attempt, and what the 
latter should or should not decide ; questions to be 
painfully elaborated by minds the best endowed, and 
of the loftiest temper, if they are left to the discussion 
and decision of village schoolmasters and rural clergy- 
men, how dexterous soever upon points of syntax and 
exegesis they may be; — is it strange, I say, that we 
should be favored with political disquisitions and 
theories of human rights, which, however natural to 
us by long familiarity, would have astonished Rufus 
King and John Marshall, perhaps Locke, Puffendorf, 
and Gassendi. 

The radical difference between those forms of govern- 
ment, by the theory of which the prince is the fountain 
of power, and all franchises and immunities of the 
people are in the nature of privileges voluntarily con- 


9 


ceded, or violently extorted, and our own, in which, 
as well in practice as in theory, the sovereign power 
resides in the people, and is derived from them, is so 
great that the ideas and habits of thinking that pre- 
vail with foreign writers, even of the most liberal and 
popular class, are quite likely to mislead the student 
who would comprehend the genius of our institutions. 
For instance, writers upon the English Constitution 
represent, and very justly, the great advance of popular 
liberty, when Magna Charta was wrested from King 
John. And yet the very form of that celebrated 
instrument indicates a concession of privileges to which, 
but for it, the people would not have been entitled, and 
could not have enjoyed. A prince of modern Europe 
is much commended for his liberality if he grants his 
people a constitution, and permits them to bear part 
wdth him in the management of his realm. With us, 
on the other hand, Magna Charta, constitutions, and a 
practical interference with the operations of the Gov- 
ernment are prerogatives inherent in the people, 
underived and imprescriptible. 

Upon this admitted fact, as a basis, the fathers, 
Washington and his great compeers, he, among them 
all 

velut inter ignes 

Luna minores, 

the philosopher statesman, of an age prolific beyond 

all example, both of philosophers and statesmen, free 
2 


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alike from romantic and sentimental notions of man’s 
perfectibility, and from distrust of his capacity, when 
properly instructed, to comprehend what are called 
great matters of State, reared a fabric that, whatever 
may betide it, will be the admiration of thinking men 
to the end of time. The people of other nations had 
been governed, sometimes well, oftentimes ill; they 
adopted a new system, and provided that the people of 
their nation should govern themselves. This peculiar- 
ity of our Government, the nicely adjusted and care- 
fully balanced machinery by which opposing and 
enduring forces are made to harmonize in their action, 
— capital with labor, stability with progress, caution 
with zeal, common sense with fanaticism ; and the part, 
more or less prominent, which every citizen should 
bear, in carrying forward its operations, either in 
assuming the functions of office, or in giving tone and 
direction to public sentiment, or, what none may neglect 
and be blameless, in expressing his individual opinion 
and wish, through the medium of the ballot-box, — would 
seem to require a degree of preparation and previous 
study greater than is devoted to the most important 
duties of private life. The Archbishop of Cambray, 
for the benefit of his royal pupils, and to instruct them 
in their princely duties, wrote a work which has 
become a French classic. The training of the Ameri- 
can youth for his civic duties is none the less impor- 


11 


tant, though his responsibility, by being more largely 
shared, may chance not to be so great. 

Some knowledge of the different parts of the vast 
country over which the federal constitution extends its 
aegis, by a personal inspection, is so obviously primary 
and fundamental in its character, that no person aspir- 
ing to be well informed, and having the leisure and 
pecuniary ability to travel, we might suppose, would 
neglect its acquisition. Nothing but the fact would 
convince us. And how many are there who have 
made the tour of one half their own country ? A gen- 
tleman of high literary distinction, who has examined 
the principal capitals of Europe, and has given to the 
world a volume of the recorded observations made in 
his travels, assured me that he visited the capital city 
of his own country, for the first time, during the 
present year. Another, who had travelled largely 
abroad, had entered the Catacombs, and I know not 
how many an ancient necropolis, affirmed that he had 
never, at that time, turned his pilgrim feet to Mount 
Vernon, the Mecca of the world, where are entombed 
the ashes of the best and mightiest. 

It may be — I know not — that to the mere seeker 
of curiosity, Europe, with her towered cities, her Alpine 
glaciers, and her thousand haunts of classic recollec- 
tion, that the remains even of African and Asiatic civili- 
zation are more pleasing and instructive than the lakes, 
rivers, and cataracts, the fields, forests, and mountains, 


12 


the caves, chasms, and dismal swamps of America. 
Possibly ; but the scholar who is studious of his own 
country, who would know her extent, her resources, the 
institutions of her people, and the exact state of her 
civilization, is no seeker after curiosity. It is here that 
his destiny is cast, and if he be wise he will diligently 
consult it. Yet, let no American disparage or under- 
value his own country. If he be so inclined, let him 
traverse it not upon the wings of the morning, not in 
the hurry and obscurity of a steam-driven vehicle, but 
slowly, in the daytime, with unveiled face, by contin- 
uous journeys, on. and on, and on, to the orange-groves 
of Florida, to the cane-fields of Louisiana, to the far- 
thest cabin, the prairie home of the white man, 
even to the Golden Gate of the Pacific, marking well 
each successive spot and object in his progress : Com- 
merce, with her million keels, cleaving the multitudin- 
ous waters of our inland seas, toiling against the 
currents of mighty rivers ; meandering adown gentle 
streams ; rolling lazily through stagnate canals ; and 
chasing the clouds as they fly to the bosom of the 
ocean ; or, upon her iron steed, careering over plains, 
across ravines, by the edge of precipices, under the 
bottom of the mountains, along the many thousand 
miles of railway that spread and reticulate like a vast 
arachne over the whole land ; or, on the wings of the 
viewless lightning, flashing with the swiftness of 
thought, from sea to sea, bearing tidings manifold, and 


13 


conducting a countless traffic along her pathway of 
wire, made sentient and conscious by the electric touch 
of science ; or, following her beasts of burden, plodding 
over rugged ways, and distributing her beneficent 
fruits in every hamlet and at every door-sill: Agri- 
culture, with her silver ploughshare, everywhere 
delving into the earth, making it a fit receptacle 
for seed, and for the showers and genial sunshine, 
patiently nursing the tender plant and awaiting 
the coming harvest, then rewarding her hardy 
sons for their incessant moil by sheaves and wind- 
rows, — hemp, rice, tobacco, snowy cotton, and the 
finest of the wheat ; or, laden with the fruits of Sum- 
mer and of Autumn, at the sweet feasts of Ceres and 
Pomona, scattering wide her apples, nuts, and purple 
grapes ; or, leading up her train of creatures animate, 

— horses of various motion and the cattle upon a 
thousand hills, the monastic mule and the edible swine, 
sheep of softest fleece, fowls, and swarming bees ; or, 
with sterner look, subduing the forests, reclaiming the 
waste places, and making the wilderness to bloom ; 
the earth rich in her perpetual succession of field and 
forest, affluent in leaf, bud, and blossom, the seasons in 
their eternal dance crowning her with a gorgeous 
efflorescence ; man, ever busy, happy in his toil, — 
here, in the throngs and thoroughfares of city life, 

— there, lone and remote, but always striving with 
the bright hope enkindled by the character of his Gov- 


14 


eminent, and the structure of society consequent upon 
it, of leaving the world better than he found it, and 
rearing his children to a position higher than his own ; 
Plenty, pouring from her full horn into the lap of 
industry; Charity, shrinking from the public gaze as 
she cools the parched tongue and pours oil upon the 
bruised heart ; Wisdom, gathering to her side ingenu- 
ous youth, and leading them along the delightsome 
paths of learning, up to the Elysian fields of knowl- 
edge ; Religion, ministering at her celestial altars, 
eloquent of sublimer themes, — starry homes, white 
robes, and palms of victory : all this, and more, — a 
sense of vast, illimitable extent, a feeling that forces 
itself, as, from day to day, and week to week, new 
scenes appear, or new terms add themselves to the 
old series, while over all and around all hovers the 
angel-bird of Liberty, with golden wings outspread, a 
lifeless form, all rudely carved, it may be, and inar- 
tistic, but symbolizing the protecting presence of free 
government, always seen and felt ; from every staff 
and mast-head the same flag flying, and everywhere 
the same emblems of power betokening a common 
and constantly advancing nationality, lifting and 
swelling the soul, until, in the rapture and triumph 
of its patriotism, it rises into the Tyrtsean strain, — 

“ The land of the free, and the home of the brave.” 

No, no, no ; let not the youth who aspires to accom- 
plish the trusts reposed in the American scholar by 


15 


his country, affect foreign travel, much less boast of 
his acquaintance with other lands, until he has a per- 
sonal knowledge of the geography of his own. 

Another branch of political education, so clearly 
elemental and indispensable as not to require mention, 
were it not so notoriously and constantly neglected, is 
the history of our Government since the close of the 
revolutionary war. That this history remains to be 
written, and must be studied by reference to many 
volumes, not always accessible, renders the acquisition 
of it somewhat difficult, but none the less important. 
I have already alluded to this topic ; and if any one 
thinks I have overstated it, let him test his own recol- 
lection of a few quite familiar historical facts. Where, 
by whom, and in what year, was framed the Constitu- 
tion? What were the exact propositions, the con- 
flicting views in relation to which were adjusted by 
what have since been known as its compromises? 
How was the Cabinet originally composed, and what 
changes has it since undergone ? The point of differ- 
ence between the elder Adams and Mr. Jefferson ? 
The cause of quarrel that led to the second war with 
England ? The era of good feeling and the Panama 
mission ? Some very well-informed persons, not pres- 
ently connected with public life, I suspect would 
confess to a more intimate acquaintance with the age 
of Pericles, or with the Augustan period ; — even with 
Venice under the Doges, or Italy in the time of Leo X. 


16 


This paradox of incivism admits of the explanation, if 
not the apology, that the latter information is acquired 
simply by reading, the former is the result of study, 
research, labor. 

The history of public questions from their inception, 
in their progress, to their final conclusion, or until they 
passed away with the occasion that gave rise to them, 
cannot but be instructive and profitable to those who 
have to meet substantially the same questions, as they 
reappear in another generation, under a different form 
and modified by the passions of the time. Thus the 
line which separates the rights of the States from the 
province of the federal power, and which runs with 
vibratory motion like a golden thread through the 
entire web of our national existence, may be traced 
with advantage, alike by those who inveigh against the 
General Government for accomplishing too little, and 
those who inveigh against it for attempting too 
much. Sectional strife, that evil and bitter thing, that 
hateful and hating spirit, that abortion of envy and 
malignity, that spot in our feasts of charity, that de- 
moniac possession, which 

“ Makes enemies of nations, who had else, 

Like kindred drops, been mingled into one,” 

against which the fathers guarded, and Washington 
admonished, and wise statesmen and good men have 
always contended ; this too has a history, gloomy and 
sad and fearful, but very instructive and full of warn- 


17 


ing. As we trace its progress from the beginning, we 
find it breaking forth upon occasions the most dis- 
similar and logically distinct ; the peaceful acquisition 
of territory, foreign wars, the admission of sister States, 
the change of an administration, the mode of collecting 
the public revenues, our relations with the Aborigines, 
and, stranger than all, matters of merely local and 
domestic polity, giving rise to deadliest feuds, — 
storms, rocking and straining the ship from keel to 
topmast, requiring the skill of the wisest and stoutest 
pilots to hold her to her course; again and again 
renewed, and still sustained, until the silly crew begin 
to look upon shipwreck as impossible, and so to stand 
scoffing at the watch, or to lounge lazily in the ham- 
mocks. Still is it the same old quarrel, excited and 
fanned by bad men, for interested purposes ; dating 
back into the far Colonial times, and across the water to 
the animosities of the Cavalier and the Roundhead; 
kept alive and transmitted from father to son, a tradi- 
tionary antagonism, sometimes latent, oftener active, 
always without adequate cause, and fiercest upon the 
slightest cause, stimulated and aggravated by influ- 
ences from abroad, which, pursuant to the divide et impera 
maxim of conquering Rome, seek the disruption of our 
Government, that the power of the Western Continent 
may be broken, our wealth subsidized, and our produc- 
tiveness inthralled by a foreign commerce. Greece, in 
her decay, touches the soul of the scholar to its deepest 
3 


18 


pathos; the decline and fall of the Roman Empire is 
the mournful fifth act of an imperial tragedy ; the fate of 
Poland and of Hungary cannot fail to awaken the live- 
liest sympathies ; but what history is so full as this of 
instruction and presage to the young American heart, 
ambitious, above all earthly honors, to have deserved 
well of the country! Written in hate, and jealousy, 
and heart-burning, and curses, and hisses, and in the 
hot and hasty words of angry men, the evangelists of 
mischief, it is the dark page in our annals, but not the 
less to be turned and pondered, both by the old and 
the young. 

The philosophy of the American constitution will 
form no inconsiderable part of a thorough political edu- 
cation. It should ever be borne in mind that the 
freer the form of government, the more complex its 
details. The simplest form is a pure despotism. 
When all civil authority is embraced within the func- 
tions of the tax-gatherer and the executioner, the 
machinery is not difficult of comprehension. But 
when the person and the property of the citizen are 
the primary objects of the law, they will necessarily 
be shielded by a system of formulae, which cannot 
be disregarded but at the peril of the one or the 
other. It is no part of my plan to commend the 
wisdom with which, under our system, personal free- 
dom is secured, and the rights of property maintained. 
So perfect is the immunity we enjoy, that, like the air 


19 


we breathe, we are almost unconscious of the blessing. 
It is only when some of its conditions are impaired, 
as when the purity of the element is disturbed, that we 
appreciate it. But I cannot forbear to admire the con- 
summate statesmanship which has reared upon this 
firm and enduring basis of liberty and property under 
the law the superstructure of a vast government which, 
like some creations of architectural skill, becomes more 
firmly bound together by every addition to its propor- 
tions. Leaving to the State and local administrations 
all municipal affairs, including pauperism, roads, and 
schools ; all police regulations, the prevention and pu- 
nition of crime ; the canons of property, its character, 
transfer, and transmission, and the principal judicial and 
legislative powers, — the National Government concerns 
itself with but few subjects, our intercourse with foreign 
people in peace and war, commercial and postal affairs 
embracing the coin, the care of inventors and authors; 
supported by revenues derived mainly from a system of 
imposts, of which we are scarcely conscious, and so 
comes to the people as a protectress, a dispenser of 
blessings, a bountiful mother, never in anger, rarely 
in vengeance, even to crime ; thus manifesting a 
marvellous adaptability to the varied conditions, 
habits, and states of society which characterize the 
different parts of the great and ever-growing Con- 
federacy. It is by this masterly contrivance that 
every new State admitted, every new acquisition of 


20 


foreign territory becomes an additional item of national 
strength, bringing to the common weal an interest 
and support not less zealous, sometimes even more 
active and disinterested, than are displayed by the 
oldest and most central of the sisterhood. We have 
no praetors or proconsuls or Indian governors, wield- 
ing a petty and hateful tyranny, and waging cruel 
wars in distant provinces, connected with the home 
government only in name ; but every foot of soil 
over which the ensign of the Republic waves is vital- 
ized by the spirit of the Constitution, and forms an 
integral part of the common country. Such is the 
political fabric which employed the sagest counsels to 
construct, and which has been thought worthy of the 
profoundest and most learned to understand and illus- 
trate. Marshall and Story and Kent and Webster 
rank with Montesquieu and Mansfield and Eldon, as 
expositors of law, by virtue of their having success- 
fully interpreted the acts of Rutledge and Madison and 
Franklin and Hamilton and Roger Sherman. Shame 
would restrain me from urging, in this presence, the 
study of our civil polity, illuminated, as it is, by the 
labors of men who made not only themselves but 
their age illustrious, did we not constantly meet with 
the crudest notions, ill-digested, and flatulent, in 
quarters where the extravagance of pretension might 
lead us to hope for better things ; for the holding of 
which, might well be prescribed as penance, successive 


21 


pilgrimages to Montpelier, and Marshfield, and Ash- 
land, and The Hermitage. The felt presence of the 
mighty spirits that may be supposed to keep watch 
and ward over these venerated places of sepulture, 
would, I am conscious, teach ineffaceable lessons of 
reverential regard and self-distrust. It is now more 
than twenty years — I remember the evening well — 
since I stood, at sundown, on Monticello, by the grave 
of the patriot sage. The property which had been 
the home of Jefferson, and was now his burial-place, 
had passed into other and uncaring hands. He lay 
in a ruinous inclosure, by the side of his wife, the 
Greek inscription upon whose marble tombstone 
recalled the elegant scholarship of her husband, — 
over him, a plain granite obelisk, defaced by the rude- 
ness of relic-loving visitors, and without an epitaph. 
This, I thought, must be sought for at the Capitol. 
It there appears, on every mural tablet, like the 
Circumspice of Sir Christopher Wren, reminding the 
world that his genius and the spirit of his philosophy, 
whether for good or for evil, have pervaded all the 
institutions of his country, — 

“ The lives of great men all remind us 
We can make our lives sublime.” 

I hope, then, I shall not be thought obtrusive for sug- 
gesting that no one can consider himself thoroughly 
instructed in the duties of a citizen, or, in the lan- 
guage of Milton, fitted "to perform justly, skilfully, 


22 


and magnanimously, all the offices, both private and 
public, of peace and war,” until he has studied, at 
the best sources, the philosophy which enters so largely 
into the framework of his Government. 

The fact that with us the sovereign power resides in 
the people, and is so constantly exercised by them as 
a tribunal to which the appeal is final, imparts to 
the faculty of speech an importance which belongs 
to it nowhere else. Oratory is a power of the first 
class in the State, and the Orator a first-class man. 
Without it, attainments of the highest order, and vir- 
tues of the noblest cast, avail but little, for the pur- 
poses of practical statesmanship. With it, if I may 
say so, and not be guilty of a solecism, mean abilities, 
unsupported by a single virtue recognized by moral- 
ists, have made a very respectable figure, passing quite 
current, in Senates and in Cabinets. But it is not 
everything which bears the charmed name of oratory 
that avails for the accomplishment of results like 
these. Neither the ponderous sentences of sombre 
didacticism, nor the polished phrase of the schools, 
full of classic and learned allusion, sparkling with 
graceful and volatile wit, and modulated to the lisp- 
ing cadence of the oaten pipe ; nor yet the gayly 
caparisoned rhetoric of festive display, draped though 
it be in the folds of the star-spangled banner, and 
scaring the eagle himself from his eyrie on the top- 
most crag of the cliff, are of much account, when 


23 


brought to the discussion of high public interests, 
and measures of greatest moment. Here is no field 
of the cloth of gold, for knightly encounter, where 

“ bright eyes 

Rain influence; ” 

no banqueting-hall of wine and wassail, with gibes 
and gambols, and songs and flashes of merriment, to 
set the table on a roar ; no platform for the effer- 
vescence of an exuberant patriotism and national 
pride. Business more serious is in hand ; earnest, 
actual work, full of meaning and determination, a 
struggle for the mastery, that nothing but the mastery 
will end ; in which no favor is asked, no quarter is 
given ; the result complete success, or crushing defeat, 
cita mors cmt victoria Iceta. In such contests to the 
utterance, to be decided in the main degree by skill 
and power in dialectics, it is but matter of course 
that a style of oratory should be reached of the very 
highest order attainable by mortals. 

It becomes thus an inquiry of much practical 
interest to know in what school this effective art can 
be acquired. I confess I know of but one ; and in 
that, only in rare instances, and after a long and 
painful novitiate. It is hardly necessary to say that 
I refer to that peculiarly American institution known 
as the stump. 

Here our best orators have been constantly trained. 
Stump-speaking, by which is meant personal oral 


24 


discussion between rival candidates for the same 
political office, in the assembled presence of the elec- 
tors, cannot be too highly estimated, whether we 
regard the intelligence acquired by the people while 
hearing, as they often do, the greatest questions of 
state debated by the ablest minds of the time, or the 
training and thorough preparation it enforces upon 
those who are elevated to places of responsibility. I 
know of no such arena for the orator. The world, in 
its history, shows nothing like it. The auditory, 
assembled as it frequently is, under the canopy of the 
heavens, with nothing but the forest-leaves above and 
the verdurous earth beneath ; countless in numbers, of 
both sexes, of every age, of all ranks in society, of 
endless grades of understanding and culture, including 
of course those whose interested, perhaps partisan, 
suffrage is to decide the result, divided sometimes 
very unequally between friends and foes intelligent to 
understand the issues tendered, and quick to appre- 
ciate the slightest advantage gained; the actors, 
whether voluntary candidates for popular favor or 
the selected champions of a party or a principle; 
trained in body and mind with the care bestowed 
upon an athlete ; handling topics in which they and 
their hearers alike take the liveliest interest, often- 
times personal to themselves, involving all that they 
hold dearest in honor and reputation, aspiring to the 
highest guerdon of ambition, fearing defeat as an 


immedicable wound, every faculty sharpened to its 
keenest edge, every power developed to the fullest, 
every resource brought into play; — narrative, argu- 
ment, invective, wit, sarcasm, irony, raillery, pathos, 
entreaty ; every figure of logic, every grace of rhet- 
oric, and possibly the Belial art to 

make the worse appear 

The better reason, to perplex and dash 
Maturest counsels ; 

and this repeated, with ever-increasing anxiety and 
intensity of purpose, day after day, for successive 
months; — it is Demosthenes speaking for Demosthenes, 
unembarrassed by the form of pleading for Ctesiphon. 
Is it cause of wonder, then, that the cloistered student, 
the scholar of elegant culture, the graceful elocu- 
tionist of the lecture-room, or even the lawyer of 
deepest reading, should sometimes suffer by collision 
with these mailed warriors who come to the onset 
with lance in rest and visor down ? Is not this the 
ordinary fate of unpractised strength, when opposed 
to acquired dexterity, as shown in every department 
of life ? And, I ask in all kindness, does it require 
any reference to the supposed barbarity of the slave 
power, or to plantation manners, or to the rudeness of 
western life, for a satisfactory explanation ? 

Indulge me a moment, I pray, as I pass from this 
subject, in a reference to a single example, as an illus- 
tration more effective than any words of mine. Thirty 
4 


26 


years ago, a Massachusetts boy, born in that part of 
her territory which subsequently became the State of 
Maine, found himself an unfriended stranger on the 
banks of the Lower Mississippi. Not twenty years old, 
his attainments were necessarily limited ; of great per- 
sonal comeliness, with head and features that a sculptor 
might have modelled, but lame from his birth, as he 
used to say in his moments of despondency, by the 
curse of God. Such he was, as he bounded into the 
political arena, and appealed to the people who had 
gathered into that newly settled region. With his 
lofty and impetuous oratory, he swept along in a career 
of brilliancy that commanded admiration and defied 
opposition ; and in a few years the name of the obscure 
boy was associated, all over the country, with that of 
the proud young State which had adopted him as her 
own. Men everywhere hung upon his words, and 
were consciously elevated by his grand conceptions. 
Nothing mean, or unworthy, or ignoble, ever disfigured 
his elocution ; nothing feeble or commonplace de- 
tracted from its power. It stirred men’s hearts as it 
had been the silver trumpet of an archangel. Criti- 
cism was lost in amazement, and was ready to bring 
oxen and garlands, and to do sacrifice to his genius. 
And even now, though ten summers have bedewed his 
grave, the memory of his wondrous power lingers in 
tradition. But recently, I heard a Senator, himself of 
no inferior name, at the close of a dinner-table discus- 


sion of his character, say, with emphasis, “ He belonged 
to no part of the country ; he was a wonder, a miracle.” 
And of the many I have met, who had personally 
known him, if asked who was the greatest orator they 
had ever heard, four in every five would answer, 
“ Prentiss, of Mississippi ” For several years was I 
his contemporary, — almost his neighbor. I heard 
often and much of his magnificent fame ; and, until 
death intervened, never doubted that I should, at no 
distant day, listen to his extraordinary eloquence. This 
fortune was denied me. In the threnic words of Ovid, 

nec amara Tibullo 

Tempus amicitise fata dedere mese. 

The study and training necessary for the due per- 
formance of civic duties is an imperfect obligation, 
which, in the case of those who deem the post of honor 
to be the private station, must be left to the enforce- 
ment of conscience. The State cannot enjoin it, public 
opinion cannot compel it, for the obvious reason that 
there is no test by which it can be tried, no standard 
by which it can be measured. Every man is neces- 
sarily a law to himself. With those who aspire to 
places of public trust, however, it is far otherwise. 
Every man who seeks official rank, or accepts it when 
tendered, undertakes for all the acquirements de- 
manded by its functions. Natural powers he may or 
may not have; but gathered knowledge he neglects 


28 


at his peril. Incapacity is his misfortune, — ignorance 
the gravest of faults. 

It is no excuse whatever, that he rose from the field 
or the work-shop, and so, in common parlance, was 
self-made ; as if every man is not, in the most impor- 
tant sense, self-made, and as if many self-made men 
were not very unskilfully made. Too often does it hap- 
pen that the natural order of things is reversed ; and 
instead of qualifying for office, preparatory to seeking 
for it, self-confident enterprise, per hysteron proterm , 
secures the office first, and qualifies at leisure for the 
discharge of its duties. Conscious versatility of powers, 
is a prominent trait of American character, possibly its 
most shining attribute. Especially does it seem fitted 
for the holding of office. Administration and diplo- 
macy and legislation, I believe, are rarely avoided, and 
are sometimes sought unsuccessfully by aspirants who 
are not unwilling to fall back upon the humbler though 
most respectable duties of the justiciary and the con- 
stabulary. An instance, even, is told, of a modest gen- 
tleman who several years since went to Washington 
for a clerkship, and was invited to a seat in the Cabinet. 

Seriously, this readiness to assume responsible place 
by persons whose previous studies or pursuits in life 
have not prepared them for it, is a great misfortune, 
to apply no harsher expression. The public interests 
suffer. Neglect, unskilfulness, perhaps maladministra- 
tion, corruption, downright knavery prevail. Dishonor 


29 


is thus brought not only upon our own Government, 
but upon free institutions, the world over. The gen- 
eral tone of morality is lowered by the evil example of 
wickedness in high places ; and, what is scarcely less 
to be regretted, confidence in the civil authority, rev- 
erence for the august majesty of the law, are ma- 
terially impaired. The consequences to the unqualified 
incumbent himself are likely to be even more deplor- 
able. The most that he can reasonably hope for is an 
unhonored, but not ignominious retirement, at the 
close of his term. Even this, in too many instances, is 
not accomplished. Unwonted authority, the general 
respect, the flattery of the obsequious, fawning, the pre- 
cursor of thrift, temptation, opportunity, are succeeded 
by bribes, peculation, defalcation, exposure, disgrace, 
imprisonment, ruin. Such is the melancholy history of 
more than one man, suddenly elevated to station for 
which he was unfitted, who, had he remained in pri- 
vate life, would have preserved a reputation unsullied. 
Lead us not into temptation ! 

Let me not be misunderstood, and I will take care 
that I may not be. I wish not to derogate from the 
dignity of office. Far from it. Bestowed by the suf- 
frage of an intelligent people, meekly borne, and 
worthily filled, it is most honorable. Still less would 
I intimate that in this country it should become the 
franchise of any class, or set, or family, or individuals. 
But I would restrict its exercise to those who, to in- 


30 


tegrity and principle, and a high sense of personal 
honor, have added a competent knowledge of public 
affairs. With this limitation, let it be open to the free 
competition, alike of the lowest and the highest. The 
best place to the best man. 

Examples are not wanting of the fatal gift of official 
honor, injudiciously conferred, and presumptuously 
accepted. Unhappily, it were not necessary to go 
beyond our own country and our own time. I prefer, 
however, to seek one in the annals of another country , 
and a former period, for the threefold purpose of 
selecting an illustrious instance, and of showing that 
corruption in office is not an immorality peculiar to the 
present, or any other age ; and of avoiding all invidious 
allusion to contemporaneous events, and to persons now 
living. In the long procession of state criminals, in 
which appear the forms of Alcibiades, Catiline, and 
Marino Faliero the traitor Doge of Venice, the most 
conspicuous and the most melancholy figure is Bacon. 
The student is very familiar with his name, as the 
author of the inductive philosophy, the great master of 
modern thinking, and the supposed antagonist and sub- 
verter of Aristotle, and the theories of the Peripatetic 
school. He has read his life by Basil Montague, and 
enough of his writings to have acquired a deep rever- 
ence for his wisdom. Macaulay has dramatized the 
work, and brought it before the public in a brilliant 
series of tableaux vivans . In these he has delighted ; 


31 


and the chances are that recondite allusions to the 
Baconian method, perhaps quotations from his pages, 
or, more likely, some of his huge thoughts, uncon- 
sciously adopted, set off his final Academic thesis to 
great advantage. True, both these learned commen- 
tators refer to a disastrous epoch in his history, but in 
such a way as to make little impression upon the in- 
genuous mind, and it is suffered to float from the recol- 
lection, as one of the clouds of detraction that some- 
times overcast the memories of great men. To this 
category are generally referred the famous lines of 
Pope. 

With such feelings of admiration for the immortal 
chancellor, the scholar usually enters upon the pro- 
fessional study of the law. In the course of his 
reading, he approaches, with sullen resolution, the 
massive folies of the State Trials. He finds them a 
strange book of chronicles, incongruous, almost gro- 
tesque. Side by side, are the cases of the gallant Sir 
Walter Raleigh, of Mary Queen of Scots and of 
sorrows, and of the infamous Earl of Castlehaven, and 
of the lascivious Lady Francis Howard. But none of 
them shock his sensibilities as do the “ proceedings in 
Parliament against Francis Bacon, Lord Yerulam, 
Viscount St. Albans, Lord Chancellor of England, upon 
an Impeachment for Bribery and Corruption in the 
execution of his office.’ , It were tedious to pursue the 
investigation by the Commons, the framing of charges 


32 


to be preferred at the bar of the House of Lords, where 
the accused, by virtue of his office, had presided upon 
the wool-sack, second in dignity only to royalty, and 
the solemn trial before that august body, sitting as a 
High Court of Impeachment. It is a dreary recital of 
many pages, — proof, — confession, — the hand that wrote 
the Novum Organum polluted with filthy bribes, the mind 
that dictated the De Augmentis corrupted gnd defiled. 
Permit me, however, to read a few passages from the 
conclusion of this painful narrative. 

The scene is the House of Lords, — the trial has pro- 
ceeded variously, for forty-five days, and it is now the 
third of May, — the year the same in which the fugi- 
tive Puritans are preparing to seek a home in the 
western world ; the great delinquent is prostrate in bed 
at York House ; the Lord Chief Justice has been com- 
missioned to preside in his place, pending the trial ; the 
Peers are sitting in their official robes ; they have sent 
a message to the Commons that “ they are ready to 
give judgment against the Lord Viscount St. Albans if 
the Commons shall come to demand it ! ” The Commons 
appear at the bar, headed by the Speaker, who demands 
“ judgment against the Lord Chancellor as his offences 
require ; ” the Lord Chief Justice from the wool-sack 
makes answer : — 

This High Court doth adjudge, “ That the Lord Viscount St. 
Albans, Lord Chancellor of England, shall undergo Fine and Ransom 
of 40,000 Pounds. 






33 

11 That he shall be imprisoned in the Tower during the King’s 
pleasure. 

“ That he shall forever be uncapable of any Office, Place, or Im- 
ployment, in the State or Commonwealth. 

11 That he shall never sit in Parliament, nor come within the verge 
of the Court.” 

This is the Judgment and Resolution of this High Court. 

“ Thus,” continues the brief and severe legal chronicler, “ he lost 
the Privilege of his Peerage and his Seal ; and it was for some time 
doubtful whether he should be allowed to retain his Titles of Honor, 
which was all he did, having only a poor, empty Being left, which 
lasted not long with him, his Honor dying before him. Though he 
was afterwards set at liberty, and had a pension from the King, he 
was in great want to the very last, living obscurely in his chambers at 
Grays Inn, where his lonely and desolate condition so wrought upon 
his melancholy Temper, that he pined away; and after all his height 
of Abundance was reduced to so low an ebb, as to be denied Beer to 
quench his Thirst; for having a sickly Stomach, and not liking the 
Beer of the House, he sent now and then to Sir Fulk Grevil Lord 
Brook, who lived in the Neighborhood, for a Bottle of his Beer; and, 
after some grumbling, the Butler had orders to deny him. 

“ He died on the 9th of April, 1626, being Easter-day, early in the 
morning, in the 66th year of his age, at the Earl of Arundel’s House 
in High-gate, near London, to which Place he had casually repaired, 
about a week before. The Distemper of which he died was a gentle 
Fever, accompanied with a violent cold ; whereby the Defluxion of 
Rheum was so great upon his breast that he was quite suffocated. 

“ He was buried in St. Michael’s Church, at St. Albans, being the 
place directed for his Burial by his last Will, both because his Mother 
had been buried there before, and because it was the only Church 
then remaining within the Precincts of old Verulam; where he hath 
a Monument erected for him of white Marble, by Sir Thomas Meautys, 

5 


formerly his Lordship’s Secretary, afterwards Clerk of the King’s 
Privy-Council, with an Inscription composed by the famous Sir Henry 
Wotton.” — 1 State Trials , 387. 


So Bacon died, to use the words of Lord Campbell, 
“with the ineffaceable brand of public infamy deserv- 
edly fixed upon his character ; but notwithstanding all 
his faults, one of the greatest ornaments and benefac- 
tors of the human race.” 

And my purpose in thus exhibiting his ignominious 
fall has been to point to what he himself regarded as 
the one great error, “ which led the rest, that, knowing 
myself by inward calling to be better fitted to hold a 
book than play a part, I have led my life in civil 
causes, for which I was not very fit by nature, and 
more unfit by 'preoccupation of mind.” Lord Brougham, 
in a recent address, has remarked upon “ the happy 
results of concentrated power in Bacon, wisely abstain- 
ing from the applications of his own philosophy, when 
he found that previous study had not fitted him for 
physical inquiries.” Had he likewise abstained from 
the duties of public life, or prepared himself by proper 
studies, adequately to their discharge, I coincide in a 
judgment already expressed, that he would have stood 
out upon the history of his own country and of the 
world, as the most extraordinary man that has ever 
lived. 

The difficulty of comprehending the character and 
spirit of the American Constitution, by which I mean 


35 


the complex arrangement of Federal and State gov- 
ernments, each limited but paramount within its 
proper sphere, — a difficulty of such magnitude that I 
know not of any foreign statesman or writer who has 
successfully overcome it, — is much increased by the 
great labor required to attain the proper sources of 
information. The world is very full of books, many 
more than a single lifetime will avail to read. Yet 
it is from books alone that some kinds of knowledge 
can be derived. The traveller and the observer may 
see much of our nation’s giant youth ; its growth, 
prosperity, and vast capabilities ; the social elements 
and agencies combining, and antagonizing with no 
special references to the grand result they are continu- 
ally working out ; the great labor-problem of the 
maximum of production with the minimum of toil ever 
solving itself; everywhere the tools falling naturally 
and easily into the grasp of those most capable of 
handling them ; all, to the superficial eye, as the 
ordinary and usual course of things; authority and 
power and restraint hidden from view, and merely 
ideal entities; — law, impersonated by a few plain 
old men, sitting retired and unattended, almost un- 
known even to those who find occasion to invoke their 
action ; government making its most imposing display, 
in crowds of earnest, excited, and determined men, 
assembling simultaneously to drop each a bit of paper, 
then going away to the quiet and exacting pursuits of 


36 


home, with the contented air of duty performed, — the 
bits of paper falling as light and as noiseless as the 
snowflake upon Jura, but with an aggregate power as 
crushing as the avalanche; — much of this appears to 
the casual glance of unreading observation, and more, 
the undertow and ground-swell of public opinion, sub- 
merging the strongest swimmers, and wrecking the 
fairest argosies; law defied, justice derided, and pre- 
cedent set at naught, age mocked, the opinions of 
wise men hooted at, atrocious crime avenged by more 
atrocious punishment, and both criminal and avenger 
left by society to their own fate; the great river of 
social and national being still rolling and seething, and 
foaming and bubbling, but bearing onward without 
stop or backward flow, — now rushing in splintered 
foam over grim precipices, now sweeping in sceptred 
majesty through smiling savannahs, ever and anon 
bringing destruction to man and his most valued 
works; corpses and carcasses floating down together, the 
indiscriminate feast of fishes and unclean birds, yet 
resounding with the hum of industry, keeping in cease- 
less motion the spindle and the millstone, for the bread 
and clothing of needy millions ; sustaining upon its swell- 
ing bosom the traffic and ventured wealth of many 
lands, pouring fertility over a thousand contiguous 
fields, crowning them with a garniture of emerald ; 
the defecated waters, uncontaminate and pure, a pe 
rennial fountain to slake the thirst of all animate 


37 


things, a bath of endless form and capacity for their 
cleanly enjoyment; these may be seen, are con- 
stantly seen and admired by astonished gazers, who 
look on with pride or with hope, or with fear or with 
disgust, and indulge in the wildest of vagary or con- 
jecture, with theories and teachings numberless; but 
where shall we gather that knowledge of the secret 
springs, of the hidden laws, of the unseen motive power 
which lie under and beyond all this extraordinary 
pageant, moving, directing and controlling, so neces- 
sary to appreciate, to understand and interpret it? 
Where, but in the sections of the Constitution itself, 
the debates which attended its formation and adoption, 
the contemporaneous exposition of the Federalist, the 
Commentaries of Kent and Story, in the history of 
legislation under the Constitution to be found in the 
Statutes at Large, in the decisions of the Supreme 
Court upon questions arising out of the Constitution 
and the statute law ; in that vast mine of wealth un- 
wrought, I had almost said unexplored and unknown, 
the Debates of Congress, receptacle immense, in which 
lie buried among lost and forgotten things gems of 
rarest polish, the best productions of the best minds 
that our country has ever honored ; such, to pass over 
names that occur self-suggested, as Lowndes, and 
Macon, and M’Duffie, and Burgess, and Honest John 
Davis, and Richard Henry Wilde the accomplished 
biographer of Tasso, and Hugh Lawson White, and 


38 


George Poindexter, and Felix Grundy, and McDowell, 
and Silas Wright, and another bright particular star, 
just gone to its setting, the brilliant centre of a brilliant 
constellation, William Campbell Preston. These men, 
and a host of others who achieved an honorable fame, 
gave their days and nights to the study of political 
science, and they expended the wealth of their intel- 
lects upon the topics which arose for their considera- 
tion and official action. Esteem it not, then, any light 
or trivial attainment, to be gained from flippant edito- 
rials, or even from a few half hours with the "best 
authors,” to be educated in all that constitutes the 
duties of good citizenship, in a personal knowledge of 
the geography of your country, in its history, and 
especially the history of its political opinions and 
decisions, in the philosophy of the American Constitu- 
tion, and in the successful practice of that great art 
without which all the other acquisitions will be of com- 
paratively small value, the art of thinking clearly and 
speaking well. It is not in this way that the men who 
have risen to positions of usefulness and honor in the 
nation have prepared themselves, whether they came 
from the schools redolent of classic learning and the 
belles-lettres, like the elegant and scholarly Legare, or 
from the cobbler’s bench, like Sheffy, the envied rival 
of the jealous Randolph. They drank at the foun- 
tains ; theirs was knowledge at first hands. 

Pulckrum est bene facer e rei publicce. The Roman 


39 


citizen thought it not only meritorious, but honorable, 
to give to the Republic his first and best services. 
The same devotion to country which regarded it as 
pleasant and comely to die in her cause, will carry our 
nation to a height of greatness and honor never 
attainable by the Imperial city. The memorable 
battle-signal of Nelson, at Trafalgar, is the injunction 
of patriotism to men everywhere. Their country 
expects, and has a right to expect, that they will 
do their duty to her. I have little regard for that 
diluted philanthropy which, in becoming humanitarian, 
ceases to be patriotic. It is ordained that men shall 
live in communities, bodies-politic, under some form 
of government, and with a distinct nationality. And 
if they are dissatisfied with the country of their 
nativity, they may, according to our construction of 
international law, renounce their allegiance, and be- 
come endenizened in another that they like better. 
But cosmopolitism, as a civil condition, is impossible. 
Civic duties are owed somewhere. Even the nomadic 
children of Ishmael are not an exception. And I am 
very sure that no American youth will repine at the 
lot which has placed him, at once a citizen and a sov- 
ereign, in the great Republic of the Western Continent ; 
nor will he feel the slightest emotion of envy at the more 
glittering fortune of the titled young stranger, the heir- 
apparent of a vast monarchy, whose coming among us 
has been heralded with circumstance quite propor- 


40 


tionate, no doubt, to the solemnity of the occasion. 
Should such a one there be, it is, I suspect, because 
his imagination has been dazzled by the sheen of an 
earlier civilization, which survives only in the pages of 
poetry and romance ; or because he has failed to per- 
ceive and appreciate the real splendor, the true glory, 
of our own. To him it will be profitable, turning 
from the great facts which lie piled, like a vast 
Giant’s Causeway, along the headlands of our history, 
to study the law of progress, and cast the horoscope 
of the future. 

“ A thousand years scarce serve to form a State.” 

We have barely attained, as a nation, to three- 
score and ten, the span of a human life. In that 
period, abstaining from all interference with the con- 
cerns of other States, suffering none to interfere with 
our own, studious of peace, but always adequate to the 
vicissitudes of war, we have shaken off the burden of 
an immense debt, part of our revolutionary heritage, 
and, by successive acquisitions, enlarged our territory 
to threefold its original extent, increasing in popula- 
tion and commerce, with constant acceleration, until 
we are acknowledged, the world over, as a firsbrate 
power ; while, by the wisdom and moderation and jus- 
tice that have, all along, marked our intercourse with 
other nations, aided in no small degree by the unob- 
trusive labors of our Christian missionaries, we bid 


41 


fair, at no distant day, to monopolize the confidence 
and respect of the uncivilized tribes, leaving to other 
powers the consequences of their hatred and fear. 
Looking forward, the eye reaches far away, to lands 
across the Rio Grande, to the sunny sea, where sits the 
jewelled Queen of the Antilles, and greets advancing 
millions, reduplicated again and again, in endless per- 
spective, until the rhapsody of Milton, as more than 
two centuries ago he descried the rising glories of Eng- 
land, becomes, when applied to America, almost the 
vision of a sober reality. 66 Methinks I see, in my 
mind, a noble and puissant nation, rousing herself like 
a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible 
locks ; methinks I see her as an eagle, muing her 
mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the 
full midday beam, purging and unsealing her long- 
abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radi- 
ance.” 

Gentlemen of the Social Union, — I may not con- 
clude without a word of kindly greeting. Boastful 
allusions to the times of a boyhood long gone by, are 
generally regarded as one of the symptoms of ap- 
proaching senility. Deprecating such an inference, I 
cannot forget, returning here after an absence of more 
than twenty years, that I once occupied the same 
place that you do now. Among the cherished recol- 
lections of studentrlife, none recur more pleasantly 
6 


42 


than those associated with the Literary Societies of 
College. Formed for the personal culture of the 
members, and under their exclusive direction, they 
offer facilities for pursuing studies collateral to the 
prescribed curriculum. Here each is left, in a great 
degree, to follow his own bent, to select his own sub- 
jects, and to adopt his own methods. And I may add, 
as the result of careful observation, that those of my 
associates who have been the most successful in life, 
whether in sacred or in secular pursuits, have been 
precisely those who were most diligent and assiduous 
in these self-imposed labors. This coincidence, signifi- 
cant and worthy to be meditated both by yourselves 
and your instructors, has led me, in complying with 
your invitation, to venture into paths quite aside from 
the ordinary range of literary discussion, hoping thus 
to bring prominently to your view, in connection with 
your accustomed Society exercises, the civic relations 
and duties which, in the flowery retreats of learning, I 
fear are sometimes insufficiently considered, if not 
entirely forgotten. 


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